Contents: Presidential address. Some aspects of foreign coins in the Indian subcontinent/B.N. Mukherjee. Keynote address: Foreign coins found in India: In view of the monetary systems operating in the countries of their origin/David W. MacDowall. The interpretation of foreign coins found in southernmost India/Michael Mitchiner. The impact of early foreign coins on Indian minting technique and metrology.B.N. Mukherjee. Ancient Greek Coins from Karur/R. Krishnamurthy. The Indo-Roman metal trade/David W.MacDowall. Some aspects of Roman coins in India/Ajay Mitra Shastri. Evidence of die-links of Roman coins and their Indian imitations found in India/Peter Berghaus. The circulation of foreign coins in Southern India/T. Satyamurthy. Roman coin finds in the karimnagar region of Andhra/V.V. Krishna Sastry. Roman currency in Gujarat/Dilip Rajgor. Roman silver coins in the national museum, New Delhi/Pratipal Bhatia. A solidus of constantine the great from Gujarat/Lance Dame. Scientific study of Roman coins found in India/M.C. Ganorkar, V. Pandit Rao and P. Gayathri. Satavahana monetary system - an outline/Amiteshwar Jha. Chinese coins found in India/Parmeshwar Lal Gupta. Three Hoards of Chinese coins from Tanjavur/Yao Shoumin. The venetian ducat in India/Alan M. Stahl. 39 venetia ducats from Sultanpur, Gulbarga Dt., Karnataka/R. Gopal. Venetian gold flow to India/Sanjay Garg. Foreign coins in traditional jewelleryof the deccan/Sahilendra U. Bhandare. Foreign coins and imitations used for ornamentation/Chandrashekhar Gupta. The survival of foreign coin names in Indian Epigraphy and Literature/Biswajeet Rath. Foreign coins in Gujarat: a study of travellers' accounts in the 17 century/Ruby Maloni and Nurusabha Amin.
From the Introduction: "This volume contains the wide range of interesting communications submitted to the seminar, sometimes revised in the light of the lively discussions that ensued. In his presidential address Prof. B.N. Mukherjee draws attention to some of the literary and epigraphic data available about foreign coins imported into India. In earlier times they arrived with traders, travellers or pilgrims. They also served as bullion. At times they influenced manufacturing techniques and metrology. Some of their devices came to be used on indigenous coinage.
The important distinction is drawn between foreign coins that represent the casual loss of small change and major trade currencies. There are briefing papers on the character of the Roman and Venetian monetary systems and the factors that may explain why some coins rather than others were chosen for export as part of the bullion trade.
The ancient Greek copper coins found in the riverbed at Karur came mostly from eastern Mediterranean mints. In western India there are echoes of foreign trade in inscriptions mentioning Yavanas (foreign traders) at Karle and the Greek forms of centaurs and the four-horsed chariot of the sun at Bhaja. Foreign coin names, such as the Greek drachm and Roman dinar, long survived in Indian epigraphy."
